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And pretty much my whole family lives here too

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-Fairly religious family (Lutheran)
-Church every week, and family gatherings every holiday

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Throughout my education, I did NOT like reading and writing

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Throughout my education, I did NOT like reading and writing

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Gravitated more toward math/science

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Starting in college, I now read pretty much every day

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Starting in college, I now read pretty much every day

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-Mostly a focus on nonfiction books, especially history
-S/O to the library for helping foster this habit :)

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ALL FACILITIES CLOSED TO THE PUBLIC
With the health and safety of our community and our employees in mind, all Boise Public Library facilities, including the Main Library and each branch library, remain closed to the public until further notice. Updates from the City of Boise on COVID-19, including information on additional City of Boise facility closures and reopenings, can be found on the City of Boise COVID-19 Information Page.
Mission

The Boise Public Library improves community members' quality of life by supporting their efforts to enhance knowledge, realize creative potential, and share ideas and stories.

Values

We are committed to intellectual freedom, universal access, innovation, and providing a world class experience for all members of the community.

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With the health and safety of our community and our employees in mind, all Boise Public Library facilities, including the Main Library and each branch library, remain closed to the public until further notice. Updates from the City of Boise on COVID-19, including information on additional City of Boise facility closures and reopenings, can be found on the City of Boise COVID-19 Information Page.

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Self as Disciplinary Expert and a Teacher of Math/Computer Science

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Self as Disciplinary Expert and a Teacher of Math/Computer Science

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-My interest in video games and tech helped
-I see this as a strength AND a weakness, because I need to help students who aren't naturally interested in math

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I do have experience trying to fix this weakness

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I do have experience trying to fix this weakness

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During my undergrad I helped teach computer science to high school students

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Cathie Olschanowsky, assistant professor in the computer science department at Boise State, is piloting a project with four of her students that addresses the lack of diversity in the tech world while introducing computer science to local, at-risk populations in a safe and welcoming environment.

Olschanowsky and undergraduates Ravishankar, Melia Coward and Brady Walters, and graduate student Maria Paquin have partnered with Marian Pritchett High School, a school in the Boise School District for pregnant and parenting teens.

The girls from Marian Pritchett, all of whom are between 17 and 20 years old, are attending an upper-level Boise State computer science course, the focus of which is on creating new apps that can offer assistance and support for parenting teens.

"This partnership shows them that [higher education] is possible, that it's not scary, that people in higher education are not so different from themselves."- Keith Barnes, Marian Prichett teacher

The teens identified four major needs of teen parents - meal planning, self-care, time management and babysitting - and the computer science class is now looking to the high school students from Marian Pritchett to provide guidance and best practices as the students move forward in the app development phase.

"I need to see a long list of reviews for babysitters, and if there are any free options or services available," explained one of the teens during class. "That's really important."

"The Marian Pritchett students aren't doing this in the role of students, but more of clients," Olschanowsky said. "They are our bosses."

Keith Barnes has spent the last eight years teaching at Marian Pritchett and works with Olschanowsky on this project.

"For many low socioeconomic students, higher education seems like the far side of the moon," Barnes said. "It's remote, unknown, frightening, incomprehensible."

Some Marian Pritchett students face hurdles other than parenthood. Some are living in hotels and other forms of short-term housing. Many do not have plans to pursue higher education. This service-learning project provides opportunities for these students to engage with higher education in a low-pressure, positive way by pairing something familiar - parenting - with something outside their comfort zone - computer programming.

"These students very often receive the message from society, implicitly and explicitly, that they are not successful, valued or important," says Barnes. "To be noticed and included by a big, fancy university helps them feel included and attached to society, if only a little."

At the end of the semester, the young mothers and their families will be invited to attend a special presentation of the apps that were proposed and designed on campus.

Olschanowsky and Barnes hope that the collaboration blossoms into an even greater support structure to reach more at-risk populations in the community, using computer science as just one of the many gateways.

"Careers in STEM fields are lucrative after you make that initial investment," says Olschanowsky. "Chemistry, material sciences, mechanical engineering, whatever field, Boise State can use this project as a template and engage with underrepresented and at-risk communities."

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Coding Their Way Through the Glass Ceiling - Boise State News

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Cathie Olschanowsky, assistant professor in the computer science department at Boise State, is piloting a project with four of her students that addresses the lack of diversity in the tech world while introducing computer science to local, at-risk populations in a safe and welcoming environment.

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-"Think like an X" was the definition that made the most sense to me
-Having the knowledge and skills to read and participate in a certain discipline
-Being able to put on a different 'thinking hat' depending on the class

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-Disciplinary texts, especially in my fields of math and computer science, are not written by or for minority students
-Being left out and not getting disciplinary literacy means they are more likely to drop out of STEM majors in college

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College administrators have long debated how to attract minority students -- black and Latinx men and women -- to science and technology fields.

It turns out these students already have an interest in those fields, at least according to a new study. But black and Latinx students enrolled in STEM programs are either switching majors or dropping out of college at higher rates than their white peers, the study concludes.

The study was published this month in the journal Educational Researcher.The authors are Catherine Riegle-Crumb, associate professor in the University of Texas at Austin's department of curriculum and instruction, her colleague Yasmiyn Irizarry, an assistant professor of African and African diaspora studies, and Barbara King, assistant professor of teaching and learning at Florida International University.

Using federal data from the National Center for Education Statistics, the researchers looked at more than 5,600 students, black, Latinx and white, who attended college for the first time in the 2003-04 academic year. They included students who started at four-year institutions and those who began at two-year colleges and transferred to four-year institutions.

The researchers found that there was little difference at the beginning of the students' studies. About 19 percent of the white students declared as a STEM major, compared to 20 percent of Latinx students and 18 percent of black students.

But the minority students left the major at far higher rates than the white students -- about 37 percent of the Latinx students and 40 percent of the black students switched majors versus 29 percent of the white students.

And 20 percent of Latinx and 26 percent of black STEM majors left their institutions without earning a degree, the research showed. Only 13 percent of white STEM majors dropped out.

Previous studies have identified this trend before but had never compared STEM dropouts to dropouts who majored in other disciplines, a contrast that the professors thought was important, said Riegle-Crumb, the report's lead author.

Among business majors, another field perceived as competitive, relatively equal numbers of white, Latinx and black students switched majors, the study found. The report did not reference Asian students, because despite being overrepresented in STEM majors, their sample size in other majors was not large enough that the researchers felt comfortable including them, Riegle-Crumb said.

Though the study identified a troubling trend, the researchers did not pinpoint exactly why the students of color were dropping STEM studies, Riegle-Crumb said.

The researchers also adjusted their data to account for the fact that Latinx and black students typically perform worse in high school and come from poorer backgrounds, she said.

"We definitely need more investigation into these things, what's actually happening within classrooms, to be able to measure the experiences of youth of different backgrounds," Riegle-Crumb said.

The professors did theorize why some students of color may leave college without completing their studies. Other research has found that STEM programs are often structured in a way in which students have to essentially prove their intellectual worth to stay, the study states. Essentially, they may be forced out if they don't meet high academic standards.

Minority students already face unfair stereotypes about being intellectually inferior, and this is likely exacerbated in STEM programs, according to the study. This issue was explored in a book by Maya Beasley, an associate professor at the University of Connecticut, called Opting Out: Losing the Potential of America's Young Black Elite ( University of Chicago Press). Beasley interviewed black students and white students at two prominent universities and unearthed these sorts of obstacles faced by the students of color.

Riegle-Crumb said research has proven that minority students are also more inclined to pursue majors and careers that are aligned with social justice issues, and they may find that the STEM fields are incompatible with those interests.

She said that leaders in STEM education should push back on the narrative that STEM fields do not provide students opportunities to be engaged in such issues. Engineering, for instance, is about building "new things that improve the quality of life," Riegle-Crumb said.

"The narrative that black and Latino students are choosing to leave for occupations that make less money and have less status, well, I'm wary of that," she said. "Why do they feel they have to make a choice for their preferences when white men feel they don't?"

The study's findings were unsurprising to Darryl A. Dickerson, associate director of the minority engineering program at Purdue University and president of the National Association of Multicultural Engineering Program Advocates.

Dickerson said that many students of color in STEM programs feel excluded at their institutions and have to form their own communities.

He recommended that institutions look at their own data on this issue. If students of color are exiting STEM majors at higher rates, then officials should be questioning why and addressing the problems that are driving students away.

"Ask those questions on a regular basis, ask the questions of students, of those who have graduated, and figure out the reasons they are leaving," Dickerson said. "Consistently do those checks. It can't be something that is happening every so often -- it has to be part of continuous quality improvement."

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Latinx, black college students leave STEM majors more than white students

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College administrators have long debated how to attract minority students -- black and Latinx men and women -- to science and technology fields. It turns out these students already have an interest in those fields, at least according to a new study.

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-I'm afraid of students not reacting well to reading/writing in a math class
-Some students will like it, but I know I would not have reacted well to writing in math.